artport: A History of Internet Art surveys 25 years of the Whitney Museum's online net art commissioning platform, including more than 100 works and a live world premiere performance by the artist duo Operator.
Curated by Christiane Paul, the Whitney's Curator of Digital Art, the show is organized around artport's three commissioning categories: the Gate Pages (2001-2006), the ongoing Commissions series, and Sunrise/Sunset (2009-2024) alongside its successor, On the Hour. In the gallery, an open floor plan evokes floating browser windows, bringing two and a half decades of online art into physical space.
Among the recent commissions folded into the survey is Memo Akten and Katie Hofstadter's The Thinking Ocean, which simulates a body of water shifting between fluid dynamics and computational code. "Both poetic and visually striking, The Thinking Ocean invites us to rethink our relationship to nature and bodies of water, in particular," said Christiane Paul. "Drawing parallels between thinking, consciousness, fluid flows and computation, the work highlights the 'operating systems' we share with the natural environment."
Operator's Human Unreadable Act III, the culmination of a generative choreography work unfolding since 2023, receives its world premiere as a live performance in the Whitney's Susan and John Hess Family Theater on November 19, 21, and 22.
About artport
artport is the Whitney Museum’s portal to Internet art and an online gallery space for net artand new media art commissions. Launched in 2001, artport provides access to originalcommissioned artworks, documentation of net art and new media art exhibitions at the Whitney,and new media art in the Museum’s collection.
